Hello! Purchase decision advise / questions

[Smokey]

Hello, as you can see I just joined the forum today. I have been following REBOL for several years and had in the past thought I would commit to learn more about it and continue to use it. Life got in the way among other things and I never got around to purchasing one of the packages.

I am a long time programmer, never full-time employed as such but have done some contract stuff and been doing my thing since the mid-70s.  Most of my stuff has been utilities and CLI, until a few years ago when I finally decided to try windows programming which had intimidated me to no end for years. Anyhow, I primarily use Delphi for windows GUI apps, DLLs, etc. Sometimes C or C++ for CLI stuff.

Anyhow, not having any formal training I don't know all the proper verbage so sometimes my questions or responses could seem a bit weird.

I've been getting rather envolved with website developement and have knowledge of most of the scripting languages. My knowledge is quite minimal so far with REBOL but I've off and on used /Core and have great interest in exploring more REBOL for CGI use and also am interested in exploring REBOL/Services (I've tried to fire it up on my FreeBSD server using core071 but it terminates with an error).

I am wanting to galvanize my personal commitment to learn more REBOL and the best way to do that is to put some money down on it.

I am sort of confused though as to how to pick a platform. I can understand the edition choices pretty much based on the bread they cost -- more $$ the more fun I can have and make and perhaps the deeper commitment I'll have.

I typically use windows at home since the applications I tend to rely on are windows based. Although I have a home machine with FBSD on it, it rarely is used since my practical, day in and day out needs are still tied to windows and most of my web work I can do via shell, ftp, etc.

In choosing a REBOL platform I am not certain how the difference in OS should/could effect my choice.. I would like to perhaps create some windows applications but mostly I am thinking of the potential of REBOL with respect to my web servers.

Down the road perhaps multiple platforms will be worth entertaining, at this stage of the game though I think/hope that one will suffice for what all I would want to do.

Thanks,
Smokey

[Sunanda]

For CGI work, there is very little difference between verisons of Core under different platforms.

Take the Library for example -- http://www.rebol.org

95% of the development is done under Windows with Xitami as a webserver. The rest is under MAC OS (I've not idea of the technologies used). The live system is LINUXrunning Apache.

Pretty much all the known differences (things that have tripped us up, anyway) are documented here, embedded in an article about processing CGI data:

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/art-display-article.r?article=x60w

There are some significant differences between versiosn of REBOL -- so code written, for example, underr 2.3 may not work properly in a later verison -- and vice versa. The moral there is to pick a version and stick with it